Todd, on the TV question, actually that was exactly the Sony that I guessed from the size and budget considerations. It's a LCoS, rather than an LCD model, and along with all(other than CRT)HD sets it has to scale incoming material which doesn't match its "native resolution"(1080 in this case)to even display a complete picture. The only question would be whether a player or receiver(actually the 2807 doesn't scale)would do a visibly better job than the set itself does. Those Sonys are notably good in that respect and it's unlikely that a player or receiver would significantly improve the scaling, so base your decision on those items on other features.
